Daily writing prompt

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

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When I was a child, things like spoons became tools in my hands. I loved to go around digging holes in my grandma’s backyard, expecting to find something hidden by dirt and time.

The idea of being the first one to find and see something hidden and forgotten fascinated me. I remember that during my “excavations,” I found a lot of buttons, coins, and bones; okay, they were very likely chicken bones, but still bones.

Those experiences made me believe I would be an archeologist when I grew up. That I’d go throughout the world digging holes everywhere in the search for relics, fossils, and hidden treasures.

Well, how the tables have turned. The dart fell far from its target—but not too far. My life is in ruins, yet I still discover hidden things.

Today as an author, I build fictional worlds, and as I do, I discover them. It’s amazing to find out the possibilities the fantasy world I built offers me. And no, authors do not have every bit of the world they created in their minds; as they write, they discover it and show their discoveries to their readers.

Once an author sets the rules and defines the geography, climate, and topography of each part of the world they created, they can grab a backpack and start exploring it. And when the bases are well done, everything flows and matches the whole context of the story they want to tell.

Yesterday, for example, I found out there was an advanced civilization that used to live in the whereabouts of Bhravegarv (The Academy of Witchery of my book), and that now the descendents of its inhabitants live mostly in underground holes or in rudimentary huts made of leaves and other natural structures. It’s hard to explain in this post who they are and why they live this way now, but the matter is that everything makes sense within the internal logic of the book.

I think that my early passion for archeology is still present in the way I write my books. I can’t write anything simple like a family living in a village and experiencing some sort of drama. Everything I ink must involve empires, kingdoms, places covered by thousands of years of history, etc. Maybe becoming an author was a way I found to nurture my passion for old history while writing thrilling stories about the places I’d like to explore.